Video: Neil Young and Patti Smith at BEA

Penguin publishers presented a “Live from BEA,” video with music legends Patti Smith and Neil Young. In 2010, Patti Smith’s book, Just Kids, a memoir of her time in 1970s Manhattan and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, was published; it later won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Young has written a memoir, Waging Heavy Peace (to be released Oct. 2), which he says is “not quite a memoir. It’s more like a diary and a projection.”

In the video, the pair talk about “Windy’s” writing and the influence of his father.

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On this day, March 31, in 1914, poet Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City, Mexico. He was an extremely prolific writer, with over two dozen collections of poetry to his credit. He wrote very passionately about his political views, which included support of basic human rights and the denouncement of fascism and communism; this led to a second career as a diplomat. Along with numerous Mexican literary honors, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Harvard University, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a Guggenheim fellowship, and in 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died of cancer in Mexico City in 1998, at age 69.